Hidden in Plain Sight: A Note on Legitimation Crises and the Racial Order

Abstract

In the wake of increasing racial violence, new black movements have focused on questions of criminal justice. Yet some have argued that we need to focus more intensely on the deep economic inequality that particularly plagues black communities. The urgency of this issue is heightened by a pervasive sense within black communities of perpetual and rapidly escalating crisis. One way to reframe the question is, what is the relationship between race and this new stage of neoliberal capitalism in the twenty-first century? To what degree can we characterize the period we live in as one of crisis, and, if so, what is the nature of the crisis? I argue that the United States is experiencing a deep crisis—a crisis that is deeply seated in multiple parts of the population—one that will be illegible without understanding the current and historical nature of race and capitalism in the United States.